still in the hole. By a miracle, it hadn’t caved in.
I went back through my little tunnel as fast as I dared. Tony was already stirring as the fresh air from beyond reached him. Ruthlessly I slapped him awake. We didn’t waste time feeling Blankenhagen’s pulse or handling him gently. I backed through the tunnel dragging him by the shoulder, with Tony pushing from the other end. Tony barely made it. The ceiling began to subside as his head came out of the hole, and he had to pull his legs through solid dirt.
The first thing I did was light a match. The feeble flame was a beautiful sight. I’ve had a slight phobia about darkness ever since that night.
To our surprise and relief, Blankenhagen was still breathing. That was all we bothered to find out. Tony was on his feet, swaying dizzily, but driven; I followed, lighting matches with reckless abandon.
The tunnel went straight on without bending. It ended in a flight of wooden stairs.
I let Tony go up. The stairs looked solid, but there was no point in risking a double weight. If only the stone I could see at the top was movable . . .
When Tony came down, his face was grey. He didn’t need to speak. He just shook his head.
The match went out. Holding hands, we stumbled back to where we had left Blankenhagen. He had not moved. We curled up, one on either side of him. Tony was mumbling about shock, and keeping the patient warm, and it all made very good sense to me at the time, but I didn’t really care. All I wanted to do was rest.
When I finally awoke I knew I had slept for hours. All my bruises had solidified, and I was as stiff as Blankenhagen’s splinted arm. Otherwise I didn’t feel too bad. The first thing I did was take a deep breath. The air was still fresh. No problem there.
With that vital matter settled, I started to take stock. I could hear Tony snoring; it was loud enough to wake the dead. So I knew he was okay. Blankenhagen . . .
At least he was warm. I was in a good position to know. Somehow his one usable arm had gotten around me and my head was on his shoulder. His heart sounded a little fast.
I extricated myself, sat up, and lit a match. Blankenhagen’s eyes were open.
The shreds of my blouse were wrapped around his left arm. I wasn’t embarrassed. I wear less on the beach, and anyhow I was covered by a coating of dirt
‘Sorry for leaning on you,’ I said. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘Hurt me? You have saved my life – you and he.’ But he didn’t look at Tony. ‘You are an amazing woman.’
‘And you,’ I said, returning his
‘Quite well.’ He smiled at me.
It was a silly question, and a ridiculous answer. He felt terrible. His face was flushed and his eyes had the glassy glitter of fever. The hand that reached for mine was dry and hot. But the smile was as attractive as ever. One thing you had to say about Blankenhagen: his emotions were wholehearted and consistent. When he disapproved of something, the very air turned icy. When he approved . . . Clearly he now approved of me. All of me.
The match went out. I felt sort of silly sitting there in the dark, so when he pulled at my hand, I lay down.
I’m not sure what would have happened next if Tony hadn’t woken up.
Every time I heard him go through this process I decided that, if I was ever weak-minded enough to marry the guy, I would insist on separate bedrooms. He snorted, choked, gargled, and flailed around. By the time he was fully awake, Blankenhagen was clucking with alarm and I was sitting detached, wrapped in my dirt and my dignity.
Since we were undistracted by details such as breakfast and baths, we got right to work. I don’t suppose Tony’s hopes were any higher than mine; but we had been too tired to examine the exit closely, and after all – what else could we do but try? Sitting in peaceful silence waiting to die of starvation wasn’t in keeping with any of our characters.
Blankenhagen could walk, but not much. Tony towed him to the foot of the stairs and propped him up, remarking, ‘Sit and watch. Criticize, complain, cheer politely now and then to encourage us – ’
‘And think,’ I interrupted. ‘We could use a few ideas.’
Tony went up the stairs. The first time he had banged and shoved and given up. This time he just looked. We were running low on matches, so he used pages from his notebook, twisted into tight little spills. Then he came down.
‘There’s a chance,’ he said. He was trying to sound matter-of-fact, but his voice shook slightly.
‘You can lift the stone?’
‘No.’ Tony dropped to the floor and took out his cigarettes. Those nice cancer-producing cigarettes . . . Without that vicious habit we wouldn’t have had any matches. ‘No, there’s something barring the trapdoor – metal, by the feel of it. I jabbed it with my pocketknife. But I’ve had an inspiration. Look at the way this place is built. We’re sitting at the bottom of a narrow shaft. This tunnel, and the shaft, are faced with stones bonded with mortar. They’re old. The mortar is crumbling.’
He dug at a section with his knife blade and dislodged an impressive chunk of plaster.
‘Gently,’ muttered Blankenhagen. ‘One landslide is enough.’
‘Okay, Okay. Now the stone that blocks the shaft is a monolith, must weigh hundreds of pounds, like the stones used to build the
‘Can’t you let the trap drop down?’ I asked.
‘Stupid question. Trapdoors are designed not to drop down. This one is held up by a rim of stone and some solid metal hinges. We’d have seen it the other day, Vicky, if the floor of the keep weren’t so overgrown. No, the side stone is the only chance.’
The old mortar crumbled under Tony’s vigorous knife. When the first wall stone came out, it was followed by a shower of dirt that got into our eyes and made me wonder whether he was about to start another avalanche. It trickled out, however, and he went on working. When four stones had been removed, there was enough space to allow a man’s body to pass. Tony began to shovel out the dirt. He remarked, ‘I have a feeling I’m never going to want a garden.’
I didn’t answer. My eyes were glued on that gap on the wall, which I was illuminating by means of another homemade torch. By this time we could see the end of the floor slab, and there was a considerable pile of dirt on the stairs.
In less than an hour Tony had cleared the lower surface of the stone. He began to chip out the mortar. This was the trickiest part of the job; we ended up replacing some of the dirt Tony had laboriously removed, in order to support one end of the slab so it wouldn’t give way all at once and mash Tony. After a couple of heart-stopping scrapes, he finally managed to do what he had set out to do. There was an opening a couple of feet square in the wall of the shaft.
Tony turned.
‘I think we can make it now.’
But for several seconds none of us moved. We stared at one another with the white-faced incredulity of shipwrecked sailors who finally see a sail on the horizon.
‘Better let me go first,’ I said. ‘I’m the thinnest.’
At the expense of a few square inches of skin, I got through. A push from Tony and I was out, gooseflesh popping out on my bare arms as the heavenly coolness of the night air hit them. My coat was still down below, and so far as I was concerned, it could stay there. Nothing, not even the shrine, could have gotten me back into that hole.
At first I just lay there on the floor and admired the view through the open door. As Tony had predicted, I was on the ground floor of the keep, and the moonlight scene without was exquisite. A desert would have looked good to me just then if it had a sky over it.
The sight of the silvery moonlight reminded me of a minor discomfort that had been overridden by more pressing worries. Suddenly I was dying of thirst. Leaning over the hole I croaked out, ‘Put out the torch and come
